Structure in Civil3D not displaying correctly in xref'ed autocad file

[ruipfbarreiros]

Hi,

I have set the size of my structure to be dependent upon the drawing scale and it works as expected in civil3D: when I change the annotation scale, the size of the structure changes accordingly.

The problem is that this behaviour does not happen in plain AutoCAD when I xref the civil3D drawing file. If I change the annotation scale, the labels change accordingly, but the size of the structures do not.

Why is this? Is this a bug?

Thanks

[Jay_B · Accepted solution]

The Annotation scaling in Civil 3D has a different behavior than AutoCad Annotation scaling.

The Model Space scale in the C3D dwg should match the target Viewport Scale in Plan Sheet.

Google "civil 3d annotation scaling" and you'll get plenty of hits explaining their differences.

[ruipfbarreiros]

so it's not possible for the same civil3d drawing to be xref'ed into different drawings with different annotation scales, right? that's a shame if it's not possible 😞

[Jay_B]

No, AFAIK it's not possible when using the same PN Xref which uses the same styles without some form of trickery.

With Alignments for example I'll create a dwg which has all the Alignments dref'd into it and apply the labeling 

in this file for an overall Alignment file. Then I'm able to apply whatever MS scale I choose to that overall dwg which is

different from rest of the project MS scale.

[ruipfbarreiros]

i understand how that would work regarding labels, but with pipes and structures, for example, would there be any workaround possible?

[Jay_B]

I'm not sure I follow specifically what your hoping to accomplish but as an example if I had 1 sheet with a VP at

1:50 Scale and the other VP @ 1:100 Scale.

Say the Pipe Network base dwg is at 1:50 then create another PN dwg for 1:100 and dref the PN into it then

another Pfl view of the other scale could also be created if needed.

Then xref both of these files into the plan sheet. Set 1 to 1:50 & the other to 1:100.

So yes in many cases there are various workarounds to work with multiple scales but most are rather messy and 

take extra effort.

[ruipfbarreiros]

sorry but I did not understand your method...what do you mean by "Pfl view"?

Here's what I want to achieve:

1 - I have a drawing file with a pipe network name PipeNetwork.dwg. In that file, if I change the annotation scale, the whole drawing scales accordingly...

2 - I want the file PipeNetwork.dwg to be xref'ed into 2 drawing files:

     a) Drawing1.dwg - This drawing will have a viewport with the scale 1:200

     b) Drawing2.dwg - This drawing will have a viewport with the scale 1:500

How can I accomplish this when the pipes and structures only react to the drawing scale set on the PipeNetwork.dwg file?

Thanks

[ruipfbarreiros]

anyone?

[ruipfbarreiros]

Still haven't figured out a way to accomplish what I'm trying to do.....anyone have any ideas?

[kmcdevitt2MKPE]

Late to this conversation but this is still an issue so thought I would put in my 2 cents.  We have the same issue.  I work on a lot of site development projects, and it is common to work with drawings in 3 different scales that all reference the same base design files.  For instance, we will have an overall scale (say 1"=100') to show the entire parcel, a normal scale for the bulk of our sheets (generally 1"=30' to 1"=50' depending on complexity) and then we will use 'blow up' detail areas for things such as ramp grading or areas that have a lot of detail, usually a 1"=10' scale. 

We commonly have pipe network structures that show up in all 3 scales.  Our standard is to save the base file in the primary (middle) scale.  The structures still look HUGE on the 10 scale drawings, and small in the overall drawings.  I wish Autodesk would fix this so that xref'ed Civil3D objects worked correctly with drawing annotation scales. 

The only workaround we have found is to make a data shortcut to the pipe networks within the 'sheet' drawing we are working in, and freeze the structures in the base xref file.  We have to assign styles within the sheet files in order to do this as the shortcuts do not carry any style changes through to the sheet file from the base file.  Usually doesn't take that much time, but still extra work.  We have found that these structures will work with the viewport annotation scale so long as they are objects by data shortcut within the sheet drawing, and not the just xref'ed into the drawing.  Also, if something in the base file changes, you then need to synchronize your data shortcuts or the information in the sheet file would be out of date, which is an area for redundancy errors.